Traditionally, when a patient receives a medical prescription from a doctor, the patient would bring the prescription to a pharmacy to receive the medication. Systems have been implemented to allow hospitals to directly send a prescription order to a pharmacy of a patient's choosing. However, sometimes, when the patient arrives at the pharmacy, the patient is notified that one or more of the medicines in the prescription is not in stock at the pharmacy. Since patients' need for medicine is often urgent and time sensitive, they cannot always wait for several days for a medicine to be restocked at a pharmacy. In order to obtain his/her prescribed medication, a patient will have drive to one or more other pharmacies and wait in line to see if other pharmacies have their medication in stock. This process is often time consuming and frustrating to the patient, and can result in the patient purchasing medicine at a price higher than the price offered at the original pharmacy. This also causes a loss of revenue to the first pharmacy the patient visits.
Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention. Certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. The terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.